Witcher 3 - Interview @ PCGAMER

PCGAMER interviews Executive Producer John Mamais to ask a few questions about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

PC Gamer: Does Geralt have any leisure activities—more of The Witcher 2’s minigames?

John Mamais, Executive Producer: We’ve mentioned knife throwing before but TW3 will include additional mini-games that we don’t want to reveal just yet.

We have, though, introduced something entirely new to the series in The Witcher 3 that needs mentioning here—Monster Hunting. It’s not exactly a leisure activity but it is an engaging new feature outside of the main quests, something that bolsters the RPG feel and plays into the hardcore nature of the game. Geralt is a witcher and hunting monsters is his main source of income—but in the previous games he was swept from place to place by urgent affairs and didn’t really have the time to take on a lot of extra monster-slaying jobs. In The Witcher 3, we’re on the road again and hunting monsters is back in the spotlight. The leshen sidequest is a great example of what monster hunts look like—you gather evidence as you try to determine what kind of monster are you dealing with and what its weak spots are. Then, depending on the type of beast, you find its lair or lure it out. We tried really hard to embed each and every monster hunt in the world so they emerge naturally—quite often the monsters are worshipped or feared, there are local legends about them and so on.

How persistent is the world? If Geralt returns to that village after the leshen quest, will we see how our actions changed it?

Yes. After you make your choices and complete the quest, you can revisit the village and see the impact your actions have had on it. At E3 we showed this in the form of an instant flashforward, but normally that’s something players would see after several hours of play. Geralt’s actions (or his inaction) will visibly impact various NPCs and communities.

Do any sidequest encounters involve large-scale events, such as a town under siege?

We’ve got quests that cause ripples on a really large scale but these are usually part of the main story arc. Sidequests will resonate with the world on a more intimate level—depending on our decisions villages or specific districts of a city may be affected.